Semiconductor devices continue to shrink in size. As the critical dimension of semiconductor device shrinks beyond 10 nm, new semiconductor materials are being investigated to overcome performance issues that become apparent using silicon at such scales. Increasingly, germanium is being included with silicon as an alloy to improve the semiconductive properties of various parts of the device. For example, channel areas, source drain areas, and contacts for the source and drain areas are increasingly being made of silicon-germanium alloys. As is typical of logic structures, these areas are usually doped with conductivity-enhancing materials, such as boron. As is also typical, the doping process is followed with an activation process to reduce resistance of the various structures and access the conductivity-enhancing features of the dopants. The channel and source/drain areas are typically doped and activated in separate steps, although in some processes these regions are doped and activated in one doping step and one thermal treatment step. The contact regions are typically doped and activated in subsequent steps. The small size of these regions gives rise to a high likelihood of degradation during subsequent thermal processing. It has been found that when commonly-used thermal processes are used to activate boron-doped silicon-germanium (SiGe:B) contacts, strain induced in the channel region can relax and dopant profile in the channel and source/drain regions can degrade. A thermal process is needed that can activate doped contacts in 10 nm and smaller devices.